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The Unknown Canova This exhibition, organized by the State Hermitage in conjunction with the Museo Civico (Municipal Museum) of Bassano del Grappa and the Canova Foundation in Possagno, Italy, is exceptionally interesting. The Hermitage, while possessing one of the world’s largest collections of Antonio Canova’s marble sculpture, does not have graphic works or paintings by him. The exhibition contains 102 items from the Museo Civico of Bassano del Grappa and the Gipsoteca in Possagno, the sculptor’s home town. There are drawings and paintings executed in oils and tempera on canvas. At first sight the graphic art and painting of Antonio Canova (1757–1822) seem utterly devoid of a plastic quality and remote from the creations of Canova the sculptor. The present exhibition makes it possible to follow the way in which a finished plastic image emerges from variations on a particular theme in drawings, oil paintings, tempera and grisaille works. Canova’s drawings are testimony to continuous work to develop and precisely formulate ideas that will find expression in marble or on canvas. Particularly interesting among the graphic works presented in the exhibition (a considerable portion of which are academic studies of nude models or drapes) are the preparatory sketches for marble statues now in the Hermitage — The Three Graces, Cupid and Psyche, Paris and Hebe. As well as drawings, the exhibition features works of painting by the Italian sculpture in oils, tempera and the grisaille technique. Canova’s activities as a painter that began in Rome in the 1780s and 1790s became more intensive during the period he spent in his home town of Possagno in 1798–99. The artist indulged in experimentation on canvas and his compositions in paints often precede the creation of the corresponding sculptural variant: in them he tried out new themes and it is in them too that his ideal of female beauty took final form. In three of the paintings included in the exhibition — The Graces, La Sorpresa and Venus and a Faun — the prototypes emerged of the future sculptural masterpieces — The Three Graces, Venus Italica and Pauline Bonaparte Borghese as Venus Victrix. The exhibition includes tempera compositions from the Gipsoteca in Possagno. A considerable portion of the temperas were inspired by dance, a theme particularly in accord with Canova’s genius. In the temperas Canova tried out new compositional rhythms, created the formula for a new, more refined elegance and, lastly, found some original solutions that were later realized in marble. For Canova grisailles were no more than ordinary models: in them he "strove to achieve the maximum separation of flashes of light and depths of shadow, a tangible material effect, so as to visualize what it would look like in bas-relief." In terms of subject-matter they divide into two groups: one featuring dancers, nymphs and cupids, the other containing studies for tombs. While the first group echoes the themes of the temperas, the second is more tragically moving — particularly emotionally powerful are the scenes of The Mourning of the Countess de Haro and England, Scotland and Ireland Receiving the Mortal Remains of Horatio Nelson. For early-19th-century painting in Italy, and indeed beyond, Canova’s works are an exceptional phenomenon: in some of the grisailles Canova the "painter" ascends to a peak as lofty as the one he reached with his marble statues in the "elevated" style. An illustrated catalogue has been produced for the exhibition. |
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Copyright © 2011 State Hermitage Museum |
